


All the Right Questions

by LizAnn_5869



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizAnn_5869/pseuds/LizAnn_5869
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While giving the Doctor first aid for a minor injury, Donna asks all the right questions....and they end up discussing regeneration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Right Questions

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by timepetalsprompts "Sloth". I did a bit of a different take on it.

"Bloody hell, Spaceman, don't be such a freakin' baby. You're what- nine hundred something? Ya act like you're two!"

"It hurts, Donna, and you're not waving the sonic in the correct way to sterilize the wound! And....did I mention it hurts? Like hell?" 

His finger, still rapidly swelling, was twice the size of the two fingers closest, and purple. "Well, was it toxic? The space sloth bite?" Donna asked, waving the sonic in a slightly different way.

"It was not a 'space sloth.' It was a Paryaximous Omnivoid. A nasty, feral one with anger management issues or something. They don't have sloths on Paryaxi!"

Donna rolled her eyes. "Well, forgive the stupid human for not knowin'. And you didn't answer my question! Is it toxic?"

"No, but the saliva could cause a nasty infection. That's why you're supposed to...oh, just give it here." He snatched the sonic away from her. 

She glared at him. "Rude!"

"And I've got you to be the ginger," he muttered. He aimed the blue glow of the sonic straight to the wound. 

"You didn't tell me to do it that way, dumbo. Settle down, why don't ya. Looks like you've got the sloth spit under control."

The Doctor huffed. "Not a sloth!" 

"It sure as hell looked like one. Chartreuse, I'll give you that, but a sloth all the same. I did not expect it to attack you like that. Thought you were gonna lose your finger until you did that Vulcan nerve pinch thingy with your other hand."

The Doctor looked at the wound. The wound was cleaned and closed, but it still needed bandaging for a few hours until his body could heal it.  
He searched through a drawer in the infirmary, looking for the thirty-fourth century self sealing bandages. He was too tired to correct her. Besides, what he had done wasn't really that far from a Vulcan Nerve Pinch. It rendered the creature temporarily stunned. "Would you help me with positioning this?" He handed her the bandage. 

It didn't look like any plaster Donna had ever seen, and she shot him a quizzical look. It didn't appear to have any adhesive.

"Just position it under my finger." She held it in place, and he aimed the sonic at the plaster. She gasped as the plaster wrapped itself around the wound all on its own. 

The Doctor winced and hissed at the plaster tightened. He relaxed visibly as it adjusted to the swelling. "As the swelling goes down it will continue to adjust itself, and then dissolve when I no longer need it. Thirty-fourth century tech. Brilliant." Donna nodded in agreement, impressed.

"Now I just need to keep it elevated for a bit. Fancy some tea?" 

"Sure," she answered, but he could see by the look in her eyes something was still bothering her.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, what if you had lost your finger? What would we have done? I don't know a thing about how to take care of you if you were seriously hurt. What if you were able to recover the finger? Would you sew it on? With thirty-fourth century stitches? Or what if it..." She grimaced. "....swallowed it and we couldn't put it back on? What do you lot do?" She looked sickened and said, "God, would we use spare parts from that freaky hand you have in the jar?"

He turned to face her, putting his uninsured hand on her shoulder. "Trust me, it would take a lot more than that to really hurt me. And no, we couldn't use that hand. Superior physiology, see? I'd redirect the blood flow, so blood loss wouldn't be an issue, and well, yes, put it back on. And if I lost it completely....."

"Bloody hell. You lot probably just regrow it like a starfish or somethin'!" Donna interrupted.

The Doctor chuckled. "No, I'd have to find a nine fingered pair of gloves. That's all. It's not like I'd be in my first fifteen hours of regeneration." As soon as the words left his mouth, the Doctor recalled that he had never mentioned regeneration at about the same time Donna fixated on the word. 

"Regener.....what?" Donna sputtered.

"Let's go get that tea," he said, starting to walk out of the room.

Donna grabbed his arm. "No, you're not gonna drop somethin' I don't understand on me and then walk away."

The Doctor sighed. "No, Donna. I wasn't going to do that." Donna snorted incredulous laughter. "No. I mean it. It's..a bit of a long story. Let's have some tea while I tell you." 

Donna still looked skeptical, like she expected him to do a runner and avoid the conversation, as was his habit when a difficult subject arose. He indicated that she should lead the way into the kitchen. "Tea won't make itself," the Doctor said.

*******

There was a hot, steaming kettle of tea on the burner. It looked as though the TARDIS had taken it upon herself to get their conversation started. Obviously, this was a topic that his time ship felt he had neglected. 

"So, spill," Donna said simply.

He sighed. "All right. I wish I'd told Rose this, it would have made the transition easier. And I tried to tell Martha. But we were in sort of an....extreme....situation and there wasn't time."

"Well, we're not. We're just havin' tea. No time like the present." Donna sipped her tea, waiting patiently for him to talk. 

"Relatively speaking," he said with a smirk. Donna raised her eyebrow, as a push for him to just get on with it. "Okay. Time Lords have a...way to cheat death. "

"You can't die?"

"I can die. If I have a catastrophic injury, I could die without regeneration. But regeneration is...a way that I can hold off death. My cells...change. I undergo a complete change, from the cellular level. Everything is rewritten. My body, mind, personality....looks....changes. Everything, other than my memories and my identity. I am always the Doctor. It's like the old me dies and a new man takes my place."

Donna's eyes were wide as she tried to process this. "How old are you?"

"903. Give or take. I'm not even entirely sure."

"How many yous have there been?

"I'm in my tenth incarnation."

She thought about it. "That means you haven't always been a skinny streak of alien nothing?"

He laughed. "I've been tall...short..gray...curly...blonde...my eighth was a bit of a dapper man.... I've been sporty in a crickety sort of way....but always alien. I've looked older than I look now. "

"Do you look younger as you get older? Because you could bottle that and make a fortune!" 

"Not necessarily. My next me could be older....or a younger man. It depends...Some of it's chance. But we can control it to a certain extent. We can influence it." He laughed, adding, "I had a time lady friend who once said she was trying out different dress sizes as she regenerated. She settled on the face of a woman we'd met on our travels."

Donna's eyes were saucers. "Wow. So...you...." She indicated him, waving her hand up and down. "You settled on that?"

"You're really insulting," the Doctor grumbled. 

"I didn't mean to insult you!" she griped back, and the Doctor reckoned she was probably telling the truth, given her lack of a filter. "I meant...what made you want to...if you wanted to influence it...look like you do now?"

"My old me had really big ears," he said, ready to close the conversation. If Romana could concentrate on a dress size, then he could use that as an excuse. He really didn't want to get into the truth of the matter.

"If you had 'em now, you'd fly off like a kite," Donna said with a laugh. The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Just stick a ball of twine on ya." 

"And sometimes you just decide to make an improvement. Anyway, the reason I tell you this is to prepare you. If something happens to me...there's a a good chance I would regenerate. I wouldn't look the same, but I'd be the Doctor." 

She shook her head sheepishly. "You'd probably want a new model companion too."

"No, I wouldn't. I couldn't think of anything that would make me do that. You're my friend. I'd want to be with my friend."

She smiled, and nodded. "I suppose," was her only comment.

"Be nice if I could convince you how brilliant you are. And I'm glad I told you. I never told Rose and when it happened, she was totally unprepared. I really regret that." 

"You regenerated while you were with her, then?"

He paused, to gather his thoughts, steady his emotions. "From Big Ears to me. She saw me regenerate into this body." 

Donna's was contemplating all she had heard. She thought she might have figured out something. "So...when you regenerated then...you said you could influence the outcome. Did you...have something in mind when you regenerated with Rose?" Or someone in mind, she thought, but didn't say. 

The Doctor had caught the gist of it anyway. He picked up his tea cup and put it in the sink. "Look, Donna Noble! The swelling is already going down! Ol' Righty will be joining Ol' Lefty in no time. I'll be able to get some repairs done. Hard to do it one handed, y'know." 

And now he deflects, she thought. Time to move on to safer topics. 

"Ah. Good tea. Just what I needed. Tea heals everything. Superheated infusion of free radicals and...."  
His voice trailed off, and he scratched the back of his head, pulled at his earlobe. "Once knew a lady who made excellent tea. A literal life saver, it was." He sighed and began to walk out of the kitchen. 

"Doctor," Donna asked soberly. "I once saw you nearly...anyway, when we were under the Thames with the Racnoss...... I got you to stop. If you hadn't you would have drowned. Would you have regenerated from that?"

He looked at her, and the pain reflected in those brown eyes was almost unbearable to see. She thought she knew the answer.

He shook his head imperceptibly. "Not then. I would now." He sighed and left the kitchen.

Donna's heart ached for him. 

*******

Under the console, awkwardly doing repairs with a mostly usable right hand, he tinkered for the sake of tinkering. It usually focused his thoughts and he usually used the time to ruminate on a solution to a particularly thorny problem. 

Both his attention span and his dexterity were unusually poor tonight.

He realized he'd told Donna about regeneration, and that was good. But he'd neglected to describe the mechanics of regeneration. He never told her the cells rewrote themselves by basically burning the previous body alive. If Donna ever had to witness it, she would be shocked by the regeneration energy, no doubt. Rose had been terrified. It was terrifying to experience firsthand, and watching had to be traumatic for a human.

He would have to get around to telling her, at some point. But not now. He didn't expect to regenerate anytime soon. He wanted to stay the same, no changes. He rather liked this body, this personality, and he was in no hurry to let it go now, despite what he admitted to Donna. 

Because what if?

What if a way through the universes opened and needed assistance closing?

What if, despite all odds against it, somehow, he saw Rose again?

He wanted desperately to stay the same for her. Because if he was this Doctor, he could still be hopeful that maybe, one day, he'd be with her again. And because letting this body go was tantamount to letting Rose go.

He wasn't ready to do that yet.

**Author's Note:**

> The reason I had the Doctor give Donna only half the story on regeneration was that she is truly shocked to see it happen in "Stolen Earth." And also because the Doctor isn't always forthcoming with information a companion might need to know.  
> Unbeta'd, so all canon errors are mine.


End file.
